The company has created a single and simplified privacy policy to cover the information practices of every element of its operations, from search and advertising to mobile products and social networking. This policy is – or at least it should be – a road map of how the company handles the mass of personal information you provide to it.

Until now, each of the company's products and services had its own policy. Comparing and contrasting this mass of documents was a nightmare even for experienced legal professionals. As a consequence, almost no one knew exactly how the company handled personal data, though at least they could take an educated guess by picking out keywords in the various policies.

Google says it consolidated these policies in the best interests of its 2 billion customers. It asserts that enhancement of privacy is at the heart of this initiative and that customers should be grateful to the company for providing a one-stop-shop to understand how it handles their information. The reality is more complex.

Sadly, this privacy policy is the last place you should look for an understanding of how Google uses your information. The new policy might be more straightforward, but it is also worthless to anyone wanting to know exactly what this behemoth does with personal data. Even worse, it is a simplistic, cynical and legally questionable device which could encroach even further into personal privacy.

Earlier this year Google made clear its intention to create a seamless data zone across the entire company, meaning that anything you provide to one part of the company will be available to all other products and services. The shift was commercially crucial for the company's continuing growth and customer reach because it maximised the commercial value of data held by the company.

However it meant that no longer could a person easily fence off personal information to a selected part of Google. It's a case of all or nothing. Under the new policy your location data from an Android phone could be combined with search information and YouTube habits to create premium-rate targeted advertising.

To achieve this "single sign-on" the company needed to consolidate all its policies or risk running afoul of trade and privacy regulators. Unfortunately the new policy omits almost all the important details of "how" the company handles your information, and reads more like a declaration of its corporate rights. Even after a long battle with the European commission and regulators over how long the company could retain personal information, the new policy is silent on the issue, as it is on almost all other privacy aspects.

The outcry over Google's new policy has been almost universal. With uncharacteristic restraint the French privacy regulator described it as "vague", and then went on to predict that as a consequence it was probably unlawful in Europe. Given the absence of detail in the privacy policy, together with a litany of injudicious swipes at Europe from Google's executives, it's unlikely the company much cares what Europe thinks.

The new policy highlights a contradiction in a company that has been increasingly dogged by controversy over privacy issues. On the one hand Google has started to turn the ship around on awareness of privacy issues (it used to be that the word was all but banned at Google HQ). Individual products and services are now designed with a greater awareness of privacy consequences.

However, in view of the new prime directive this new awareness is merely an inconsequential laminate over a corporate business model that puts customer surveillance at the core of the company's interest.